In a prior post, we discussed hoarding and speculation as questionable bases for applying ARIN’s need justification to the IPv4 market. IPv6 evangelists in the ARIN region often line-up to support conservative needs-based transfer policies. In their view, an inefficient and opaque IPv4 market increases the burdens on network operators to remain on legacy IPv4 networks. This heightened burden will, they hope, push more network operators to migrate to IPv6.

Interestingly, that’s not how the RIPE NCC community saw things. According to the leadership at RIPE NCC, it was the IPv6 evangelists who were most in favor of eliminating needs basis for transfers. It was their perspective that IPv6 would not truly take hold until IPv4 was fully depleted – not just the free pool but all available numbers. This meant eliminating needs basis from the transfer requirements, encouraging an active broker market, and helping to facilitate those transfers by simply not getting in the way.

Removing needs-based assessments in ARIN would ensure an efficient, and transparent marketplace. An efficient and transparent market gives companies the opportunity to plan a migration to IPv6 that fits with their natural business cycle, and mitigate unnecessary costs associated with building out and operating IPv6 networks while their IPv4 infrastructures are still in good working order.

Without the artificial barriers of needs justification, the IPv4 market can actually serve as the most effective path to wide-spread IPv6 adoption.